Online mentoring

Gold Dust also offers online mentoring with the following mentors:

Kathryn HeymanLiz JensenShelley WeinerJane RogersRomesh Gunesekera

Work with an award-winning writer as your mentor, wherever you are in the world. All you need is a good internet connection and a commitment to write your novel or biography or memoir in between ‘meetings’. The offer of a mentoring place is subject to the same criteria. Your wok will be read by the potential mentors. We are happy to discuss which ones you’d like us to approach on your behalf. The mentoring arrangement is the same: we offer you sixteen hours of the mentor’s time. This will usually take the form of eight Skype sessions and eight hours of the mentor reading your work in between times. Or a combination of meetings – if you could meet your mentor once or twice during the mentoring and the rest as Skype and email. (Please email us if interested in online mentoring, or apply here).

We believe we are unique in offering you the opportunity to work with writers of this calibre, individually, tailored to you, wherever you are in the world. Here are some testimonies from those who have been mentored this way:

‘Along my writing journey, Shelley’s feedback was a perfect combination of encouragement and keen-eyed remarks when my work did not live up to its potential. By the end of the Gold Dust series, she left me with ideas and the impetus to compete my novel. Her consideration and flexibility with the schedule and content of our discussions made it possible for me to manage this high-quality creative writing programme alongside my working life. I am proud to have had Shelley as my mentor and to have been part of the Gold Dust scheme.’– Gabor Holch, Gold Dust (based in Shanghai, mentored by Skype), February 2017

‘After eight months with Shelley Weiner on the Gold Dust mentoring scheme I feel as if I have been at university, with my own private tutor to guide, encourage and inform me. It has been a privilege. Shelley helped me to see that the focus of my novel was muddled, too many characters, too many points of view. Under her guidance my central character, Ana, came alive and I realised that it was her story I was telling. I would not have done this without Shelley, who believed in the book and believed in Ana. She also helped me, in the nicest possible way, refine my writing and to aim for the spare, elegant style to which I aspire and which Shelley herself achieves in her books. In her I found a friend, a tutor, a guide – everything I was looking for in a mentor.’– Nina Davies, Gold Dust (based in Spain, mentored by Skype) , January 2017

‘Well within my target year, the novel was out there in the real world, with an agent.’
Jane Rusbridge, author of The Devil’s Music (Bloomsbury), mentored by Kathryn Heyman.

‘During the mentoring year I found an agent based on a previous novel and Shelley has been extremely supportive over that big step.’Dorothy Judd, mentored by Shelley Weiner.

‘I would recommend the Gold Dust mentoring scheme to any first time novelist and am grateful to you for giving the opportunity of working with such a great writer and teacher.’Sally-Anne Lomas, mentored by Jane Rogers